


just friends

by mayoho



Series: Fictober 2020 [6]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket, All the Wrong Questions - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Gen, Journalism, referenced canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:02:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27580430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayoho/pseuds/mayoho
Summary: Who, what, when, were, why, and how. Lemony Snicket was only just a friend.
Relationships: Moxie Mallahan & Lemony Snicket
Series: Fictober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2015945
Kudos: 9





	just friends

Moxie felt her mouth drop open. She snapped it shut quickly. A good journalist was never too shocked to ask questions.

Who? Lemony Snicket, an apprentice of unclear purview, and Hangfire, aka Armstrong Feint, a man of nefarious intent but also a father and a naturalist.

What? A boy--not quite an adult--shoving a man into the belly of a beast, a beast summoned from the depth of what once was the ocean with a bombinating sound.

When? Right now. Or had it started when Lemony first blustered his way into the kitchen of her lighthouse and made them both pesto?

Where? On a derailed train, at the edge of the Clusterous Forest, where surely something else was supposed to happen. But Lemony has refused to share the plan, even with his prime associate, who didn’t know if it would be worse to learn that this was always the plan all along or that there had never been one at all.

Why? That was the question, wasn’t it? Was it a question that could be answered without an extensive interview with a boy she thought she may never want to speak to again? Was it a question that could be answered at all? It was. Moxie had to believe that; it was her duty as a journalist. But the more she thought of it, the more she suspected this might be a question that would become one's life work to answer, as one peeled back layers and layers of fragmentary plots. Was she strong enough to see what lay at the core without losing some part of herself?

How? Because she had helped a boy who had been in such desperate need of help. He had seemed trustworthy. He had seemed so interesting. She had liked him so very much. Had she been as blind to the reality of him as she had thought he had been blind to the reality of Ellington Feint?

Moxie was angry. Angry that she had asked the wrong questions. But she was so, so glad that she and this boy, though she had thought it snidely and sadly on many previous occasions, had only ever been just friends.


End file.
